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AUG 7- 1923 
PREFACE. 
Forty-two years have elapsed since Sir J. D. Hooker published the 
first part of his “ Handbook of the New Zealand Flora.” Although 
no complete account of the plants of the colony has since been pre- 
pared, botanical investigations have been actively and zealously carried 
on, and a large amount of fresh material obtained. No less than four 
hundred separate communications or short papers dealing with the 
botany of New Zealand have been published, and the number of new 
species proposed is considerably over a thousand. The literature and 
descriptions of the new species are scattered through the thirty-seven 
volumes of the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute and other 
publications, some of which are not readily accessible to the majority 
of workers in the colony. To make satisfactory. use of such a mass of 
unarranged and undigested material is beyond the power of any except 
a few experts: In any case an attempt to do so would prove both 
tedious and troublesome. In short, the want of a compendious Flora 
has long been a serious hindrance to the study of the indigenous vege- 
tation, and a bar to inquiries of any kind connected therewith. 
For many years New Zealand botanists hoped that the preparation 
of a new Flora would be undertaken by the late Mr. T. Kirk. It was 
known that he had long been collecting material for such a work. His 
many journeys, extending from the North Cape to the Auckland and 
Campbell Islands, had given him an unrivalled personal acquaintance 
with the vegetation, while his numerous writings afforded abundant 
proof of widespread knowledge, and of accurate and careful botanical 
research. Under such circumstances, the announcement made in 1894 
that he had been engaged by the New Zealand Government to 
prepare a ‘Students’ Flora of New Zealand” was received with 
general approval. And when his death occurred in 1897 it was a 
‘disappointment to find that barely two-fifths of his task had been 
completed. This portion has since been printed by the Government, 
and its value intensifies the regret that the author did not live to 
complete the work for which he had made so much preparation, and for 
which he possessed so many undoubted qualifications. 
